1.
Everything is grey, from top to bottom, heaven to earth. Every day is grey. They say the sky was once blue or sometimes even pink and orange. The trees were green and the people white and black. But now we are all grey; covered in the ash of a time lost and squandered that has left us all the same. And now we are rebuilding. A new world… a big grey one.
“Where’d you say you come from?” came the words from a grey face, fixed atop a short gangly body, digging a hole in the ashen earth. The voice was high pitched and squeaky possibly that of a man’s.
“I didn’t,” said another grey face, gruffly. “But it doesn’t really matter now does it?”
“Why doesn’t it matter?” said Squeak. “Was you one of them?”
“One of who?” said Gruff.
“One of them,” he said and paused for a moment from his digging. “Them Antarctisks.”
Gruff kept digging without looking up, lean muscles on an impressive physique stretching as the shovel was forced into the earth. “I ain’t no Antarctisk. I ain’t even old enough to be one”
“Well forgive me for saying so, but you don’t look too young.”
Gruff’s shovel glanced off of a rock as it slammed into the dirt.
“Ever met one?” Squeak continued, leaning into his shovel.
“Nope.” Came the answer from Gruff, with a plosive p that plunged the conversation into a solid five seconds of silence.
“What’s with you huh? I’m just trying to make conversation here. Nothing wrong with that is there? ‘Ow ‘bout a Frozen, ever met any while you was wanderin’?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“Alright fella, just thought the time might go past a little faster was all. Have it your way.”
Gruff stood up straight for a second and looked at Squeak. “Look, I ain’t much of a talker,” a dirty finger came up to Gruff’s nose and pushed into the side of her left nostril. A long snorting sound could be heard as phlegm pooled in the back of her throat. Then a ball of phlegm arced through the air and landed at Squeak’s feet. “ And I ain’t no fella either,” she said and carried on digging.
A cold wind blew across the barren landscape, coming down from the mountains and sweeping the ash into the dunes at the edge of the plains. Slowly the world was cleansing itself. Organising the destruction into something fresh and once again habitable. One eye opened, and then the other. It was cold, so very cold.
***
Two concrete, egg timer shaped towers loomed over a rubble strewn field, lined in parts by chain-link fences. Half of one of the towers had collapsed, leaving a jagged triangular shape missing from the upper half of its form. An inlaid ladder ran up the outside of the broken tower, ending where the missing wall began. Gruff folded back a square tent like flap cut into a thin mesh sheet, that had been stretched out across the gaping hole of the tower. After both she and Squeak had climbed over the top through the hatch, she hooked it back in place, closing them in.
The grey light from above filtered through the mesh, revealing a similar ladder that lined the outer wall and led down into the tower’s depths. Halfway down a wooden platform had been built into the grey concrete of the tower, which they jumped down onto. Rows of blue plastic barrels stood upright on the platform, filled with rain water that had dripped through the sheet above. A flickering bulb affixed to a metal pipe that had been jammed between two of the wooden planks of platform floor shone bright at the far end.
Gruff looked down into one of the barrels, full of muddy grey water and the reflection of her matted hair and handsome face. She picked it up by two handholds cut into the plastic just above the waterline, disturbing the water and her reflection in it.
”Let me know if you need any help there big guy?” Squeak said, as he splashed his face with some water from another barrel.
She grunted in reply and brought the barrel to the edge of the platform where a rope dangled from a pulley, bolted to the curved concrete wall. After tying the rope through the handholds, she began to lower it down.
Squeak walked over to a hatch in the platform where a new ladder started and began the rest of the descent.
*
“You’re back,” said a grey face as the two jumped down from the last few steps to the tower floor.
Gruff looked at the face but said nothing.
“Yep,” said Squeak, stepping into the bulb lit circular space of the tower. “What a day. This guy here,” Squeak squeaked, and gestured towards Gruff “barrel of laughs, can’t shut him up”.
Gruff looked towards Squeak and for a second an expression of absolute rage punctured her face through twisted lips. She squared off in front of him, his head coming up to her shoulder, looked straight into his eyes, lifted her right hand and then brought it down between her legs and thrust.
“You see what I mean?” Squeak chuckled. “What a riot.”
Gruff walked off into the cave.
“You know he’s a she, right?” said the grey face.
“Yeah I know. We’ve got a bit of an inside joke going on though. Just winding the ol’ spring ya know?”
The grey face looked at him puzzled. His head was bald save for a tuft of hair at the forefront of his forehead that arched over in a grey wave and landed between his eyes.
“Yeah, the ol’ spring, ok… Look, we’ve had a new addition today,” Tuft said, a serious tone coming over him.
“Never,” said Squeak. "We only got Gruff two weeks ago and now another already. Gettin' a bit cosy in 'ere now ain't it?”
“Hmm. Yes. Well, this isn’t just any addition,” continued Tuft, lowering his voice to that of a whisper, “She’s one of the Frozen. One of my own.”
“You’re kidding, we was only just talking about that today in The Hole. Me and Gruff was saying how we’d love to meet another one.”
“Look, keep your voice down ok.”
“Oh sorry, sorry. You know what I’m like, I can see fifty shades of grey, but I’ve only got one volume.”
“Yes well, anyway. She’s got something of the opposite problem. She doesn’t seem to want to talk at all. And from what we understand she seems to be blind.”
“Oh blue skies, not another one.”
“Look, we’ve all tried talking to her but she’s frightened and since she collapsed in front of the fire she hasn’t moved an inch. Perhaps you could give it a go and see if you can’t get through. You do after all have this incredible…” Tuft paused and blew his tuft of hair from out of his eyes. “…gift for talking to people. Perhaps you can ‘wind her spring’.”
ns 172.70.34.66da2
and then Add to home screen.